


Here At the End

by unorigelnal (jayburding)



Series: The Hobbit Dæmon AU [3]
Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemon, Angst, Canonical Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 18:49:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayburding/pseuds/unorigelnal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They won, but somehow it feels like a loss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here At the End

“I have brought him,” Gandalf announced as they entered the tent, pushing Bilbo forward and disappearing back out into the night.

Rathwith rocked gently on her perch beside the bed, as if she were drifting to sleep and could not keep her grip. She lifted her head when they entered, slow and heavy, despair traced in the sharp lines of her face. It was as though she did not see them at first, or saw and thought she beheld a spectre, but then her eyes cleared and it seemed she would have smiled were she able.

“You’re here,” she whispered, reverent in relief, so much so that Bilbo nearly ducked back out again from sheer embarrassment. Angelica nudged him forward, peering round his legs, lit up like Yule as she looked at Rathwith. Then their eyes slid to the bed. And they understood.

“Thorin,” Bilbo said, near choking on the lump in his throat. Were it not for the trembling eagle at the foot of the bed, he would have thought the dwarf already gone, he was so still.

After a long moment, Thorin stirred, and raised his head with the same weariness that plagued Rathwith. The blankets were pulled up high so the wounds he had taken could not be seen, but their legacy was indelibly marked in the pain that twisted across his face, the stutter of his breathing.

“Master Baggins-”

“Bilbo,” he hurried to say. He hadn’t meant to cut Thorin off so soon, but he couldn’t bear the formality. Not now.

“Bilbo,” Thorin began again, and there might have been the breath of a smile there. “I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed.” He paused to breathe as if the effort of so simple an action pained him.

“This is a bitter adventure if it must end so,” Bilbo said, kneeling to put himself level with the dwarven king. For a moment he thought to take Thorin’s hand, but rested his hands on the coverlet instead, and watched Thorin’s face so his eyes would not try to stray to watch the laboured movement of his chest.

Rathwith shuddered, drooping on her perch so suddenly that Bilbo nearly reached to catch her, afraid that she would fall. Angelica scrambled up onto the bed beside Rathwith, and nosed at the eagle’s grey feathers, anxious. The eagle dipped her beak to touch the badger’s muzzle and seemed to behold Angelica anew.

“You came back,” she whispered, relieved and incredulous all at once.

“Can’t get rid of us that easy,” Angelica replied, though she did not feel as light as she sounded.

“I would take back my words and deeds at the Gate,” Thorin said, Rathwith curling a wing around Angelica as if to hold her close, and reached to take Bilbo’s hand. There was little strength left in that grasp any longer. Bilbo held on tight enough for both of them. “Where I go there is little worth in gold and silver, and yet I let my greed for such things blind me to the greater treasure I stood to lose.”

“It’s forgiven, if there was anything left to forgive,” Bilbo said, and wondered if his hope made him hear more than had really been said.

“I was a fool,” Thorin said, bitter with his own folly. “I knew you were my saviour once, and you proved more courageous and wise and good than even that measure, and still I doubted when I should have had faith.”

“We’re sorry,” Rathwith said, ever the succinct one. “We were wrong.”

“You’re forgiven, you’re forgiven,” Bilbo said, appalled that these last minutes could be wasted on apologies to him. “Please, no more.” In the ensuing silence he was alarmed to realise how cold Thorin had become, and tried to chafe some warmth back into the hand he held between his own. Thorin allowed the fruitless attempt, still trying to catch his breath after his last speech.

“There should have been time,” Rathwith murmured to Angelica, soft enough that even their other selves, sitting so close, could not have heard her. “Time for all of this.”

“We’ve had time, wonderful time,” Angelica assured her, “and I’m glad of it, even if it has to end.” It hurt her to say it, and she knew it hurt Bilbo too, but it had to be said while it was still worth saying; while there was still someone to hear it.

“Thorin goes to the halls of our fathers,” Rathwith said, “and I will be air, as I was always made to be.”

“Who knows where it is we go after the end,” Angelica said, fierce with the fear that Rathwith would simply vanish as if she had never been.

“We do not go, we merely cease.” The eagle hissed a sigh between the dull edges of her beak. “It is just as well. We are weary, Althjof, as we have never been, and ready to rest. Perhaps when the halls open after the renewal of the world we will see where it is that dæmons go.”

“I’ll see you there,” Angelica promised. She would have it no other way.

Rathwith did not answer, but stepped down from her perch onto the bed. She dipped her head to preen Thorin’s loose hair and murmured something in his ear. What passed between them was not for Bilbo or Angelica to hear.

When the eagle raised herself again she turned to Bilbo, and trembled with the exertion it took to hold herself straight, a shadow of her proud self.

“Will you hold me?” she asked, soft with fear and fatigue. It almost broke Bilbo’s heart again that even now, after all that had passed and all that would never pass, they waited to be rejected. He didn’t speak, couldn’t around the lump in his throat, but offered her his arm.

Rathwith stepped down onto Bilbo’s curled hand, her talons barely a prickle against his bare skin, so careful was she. Beside them, Angelica curled up at Thorin’s side and tucked herself beneath the weight of his hand. Perhaps, at another time, it might have been a fiercer reaction to be held so, a euphoric intimacy like the books described, but the encroaching warmth was everything like the slow burn of the last few months, touches and words and revelations all bound up in that one vital word that they refused to recognise long enough to say. Too much pride; too much fear.

Rathwith laid her head against Bilbo’s chest where she could feel his heartbeat rattle through her, and he wrapped an arm around her without her needing to ask.

“This cage I would welcome,” Thorin said when Rathwith didn’t dare.

The last of his strength was spent on the reverent brush of his hand over Angelica’s head, the badger turning her face into his touch and snuggling as close as she could. The last lingering moments were spent in silence until Thorin’s eyes drifted shut and the movement of his hand ceased.

Rathwith shuddered under Bilbo’s fingers and stilled. She might have wept if she were able.

“I think you were the best of us, in the end,” she said as Thorin’s last breath ebbed away. She dissolved into dust under Bilbo’s hand and vanished into the air.


End file.
